The Paperback Diary

All dressed up and all ready!

After an exciting day out at the sea, we've decided to just take it slow the following day. Since I had full control over where we could go, my girl friend was in for a pleasant surprise. :) All she knew was we're going somewhere nice for her birthday dinner.

While I had a few options at where to dine, I've decided to give blue mango bar and grill a try as it was nearby our hotel. They were also willing to pick us up from our hotel after I mentioned that I would be spending more then 100SGD with them.

What surprised me was that the owner, Claudio, personally came to pick us up. After chatting with him for a bit, I found out that his family flew in from Italian to open a restaurant in Phuket. To ensure that the food was top notch, he actually flew in his chefs from his homeland as well. So what we had was authentic Italian food. How awesome is that?

Beef and I

We ate like Queens and was never disappointed at their dishes. I love the that beef that I've ordered while my friend had lobster and seafood. The portions turned out bigger than expected and of course, we didn't mind having more.

Seafood and her

We've also ordered 2 desserts and a glass of dessert wine to share. Be warned that the desserts portions are huge! I would suggest 2 person to share 1 dessert as the portion was 2 times larger than what we have in Singapore.

Chocolate mousse in a huge serving

We left the place totally stuffed and satisfied. I can't remember the exact amount but it was roughly about $60SGD per person for everything. Considering that we've lobster and beef, this is very very decent! I've pretty much gave up eating beef and lobster/crabs in Singapore because I feel that we're paying too much for these stuff.

Crème brûlée

Continue reading if you're interested about the surprise I've presented. I gave her a pleasant surprise right before our mains arrived. As we've known each other for easily 13 years and have definitely come a long way, I thought of enhancing the friendship with a pretty friendship band. I could do the traditional way with strings but since we're all grown up now, I wanted to get us something pretty and wearable as a daily item.

Final Design

You've no idea how many malls I've walked to source for ideas and finally decided to work with precious stones. To make it unique, I've decided to add in my own design into the band. 2 sides of the band are different. Each presents a character of us. I'm very glad that she loved her gift and may this friendship continue to blossom in the many years to come.

It wasn't too busy when we were leaving, so Claudio gave us a ride back to Patong. While the night was still young, we've decided to braid our hair as well. It's been something I've wanted to do last year in Bangkok but never had the chance to. I would have preferred it if they were able to braid it slight thicker. It was a painful hair pulling experience but I guess it was worth going through it once for the punk look.

Chilling in the raft as we head towards the cave.

We woke up early, had breakfast in the hotel and when we arrived at the lobby, the guy was already there to pick us up. Though we were the first group on board the mini bus, 1 couple and 1 family joined us later. From Patong to the jetty, it was about a 30-45 mins drive.

Initially, I thought it would just be a small group but when we arrived at the jetty, there was a huge group of us (tourist) hanging around at the jetty. We were divided into 2 groups (2 ferries) and the boss, John Gray, joined us on board the ferry. I can't help but noticed that this tour attracted more couples and westerners. Don't get me wrong, it's a really enjoyable tour for families and friends, and I love people without comparing skin colour.

Captain Ina was given a chance to paddle around for a very short while.

For those of you who can't swim, you can request to have a life jacket as they have those available on board. Also, I can assure you that the rafts are super sturdy! I'm so glad that we do not have to paddle this raft on our own as we have our own guide. They would assign 1 guide per raft and the max load would be an additional 2 adults and 1 children on board.


We were brought into dark caves to see the bats asleep and in general, just enjoying nature. It's also good to note which month of the year you'll be going as the sea can be choppy at the different seasons. We were there in February and all we had was the wonderful calm sea!

Our finished Kratong

Our guide taught us to build our own Kratong and it will be let out in the evening when the skies are dark. We were brought into this cave for the last time to let out the Kratong and to also experience the bio-luminescence planktons (they're so beautiful). John Gray gave us a crashed course on how bio-luminescence planktons came about and why they glow. It's also good to note that not all guides have a strong command of English but I guess we were lucky as our guide could communicate with us fluently.

For food, we were provided lunch, tea break and dinner! Most of the food were cooked on board and I have to say that we were well fed and hydrated. After a hard day's work and good service, I was compelled to tip my guide as it isn't really easy paddling around the islands the whole day. It's not compulsory to tip but it's my way to saying "good job" and "thanks" to my guide who did their job well.

My favourite moments from this trip are enjoying the sunset out in the open sea, stargazing, making new friends and being able to experience the bio-luminescence plankton for the first time!

We love to fly!

This trip happened because of  a 1-1 OCBC card promotion that going on for Tiger Air. As this was a holiday as well as birthday trip for my taller miss twin, I volunteered to plan for this trip. While knowing Soi Bangla was the party area, I didn't want to stay too near to as it can potentially too noisy at night and I'm a light sleeper. After looking through so many hotels, we decided on The Nap and we both fell in love with this hotel. I hate dark/eerie looking hotels and The Nap theme colours are close to Tiffany blue and a lot of white! I love white. :)

The beds are in between queen and single size. By default, they provide 2 pillows per bed!

Our huge porch

Sunset view from our room.

I was told to book tours in Phuket itself as you can get them at a better rate compared to when it's booked online. So the moment we reached our hotel, we headed out to look the tour we wanted to join. You will see a lot of these stalls along the streets and they are like different agencies selling the same tours. I didn't bother to compare between the different stalls as I knew the original cost of the tour that I wanted to go. I was given a slightly cheaper rate and almost immediately, we booked with them to have the tour the next day.

Food from Banzaan Market

Once we're done with booking the tour, we made our way to Jungceylon and Banzaan market. Banzaan market was an eye-opener for me as the first level was the wet market and a hawker on the second. The interesting part of this market is that you can buy fresh seafood/vegetables at the first level, bring it up to the second level and pass it to a stall to cook it for you at a fee. How cool is that? We had to go back there twice!

Pedicure at Jungceylon Shopping Mall

The rest of the day was just exploration of the area and doing some girly stuff like having a REALLY REALLY good pedicure at one of the basement shop of Jungceylon shopping mall at an affordable price of SGD$20 ish? My definition of good is having all your dead skins scrubbed off your feet. I don't really care if the nail polishes are not from OPI (it's not anyways). Pedicures in Singapore are either good and expensive or slightly cheaper and lousy.

We had no problems deciding what to eat as food can be found everywhere and pubs/clubs comes to life at night. I just cultivated a bad habit to have a drink every night at a different pub before we head back to our hotel to sleep (alcohol helps me sleep better). Stay tune to Day 2 post on Hong by Starlight (John Gray's).

5 Footway.inn @ Bugis

I think it was roughly at start of this year or last year that the idea of a hostel staycation popped into my mind. I've been bitten by the hostel staying bug since my last hostel stay in Korea. I truly enjoyed my evening hanging around the common area till late just to talk to people from different parts of the world.

Personally, I like staying in hostel compared to hotel because of the warmth cosy feeling compared to a cold lonely room. Being Asian, I practically hate seeing any mirrors around me when I sleep and hotels have mirrors hanging right in front of your bed half the time.

View of our en-suite double deck room.

My girl friend picked 5 Footway.inn @ Bugis for out staycation over the weekends. It's a pretty short walk from Nicole highway MRT station and they had good directions provided on their website. I wanted to surprise my girl friend who was waiting in the room by not letting her know when I was arriving but she had a better one waiting for me instead! She customised a dozen lovely cupcakes from Blackbird Bakery. I love how the little miss twins were made into a 3D figurine.

My favourite fondant little miss twins

The rooms were smaller than what I originally expected but it was clean and nice. We explored the area for a bit to check out the common areas within the hostel. They were clean and cosy, just the way I like them to be. I guess conversations didn't quite happen as the people who are staying here are more in their own groups.

What I didn't like was that we were near a pub and the music penetrated the walls. I'm a pretty light sleeper and the thumping of the bass pretty much kept me awake till 3-4am.

Kitchen/open porch common area on the 2nd floor

living hall common area on the ground floor behind the reception area

I had a few cafes pinned out around the hostel area and we decided to go around visiting them. You can click into the post below to read more about the cafes:

• Artistry Cafe
• Miam Miam
• Symmetry Cafe

It's also been a long long while since we had late night movies outside and considering that taxis are so expensive nowadays, we decided to have a late night movie at Bugis Filmgarde. Oh! I have a habit of bringing instant noodles (has to be the chilli crab Nissin brand) to places we stayover everytime. I don't know why but the idea of bonding over instant noodles while you're staying in a hostel/hotel gels really well with me. Might be the fact that I enjoyed camping during school days; I still do but I would like to sleep in comfort now. It was instant noodle party that we had a chance to make use of the common pantry area for a while.

If you would like to save some transportation cost (e.g air or ferry tickets) and dislike staying in hotels, this is an alternative way to do a staycation for 2D1N. Trust me, I'm already wanting to do this again in another hostel like Alder or Bunc @ Radius. Have fun! :)

Food: ★★★☆☆ 
Ambience: ★★★☆☆
Service: ★★★☆☆

Symmetry is a very popular place over the weekend. Be prepared to wait for at least 45 mins if you didn't make a reservation. Alternatively, you can check out their quieter neighbour, Artistry, on the next road. As we didn't make any reservation on Saturday, we decided to come back again on Sunday morning for breakfast.

We were back on Sunday without reservation and yes, the place was already beginning to fill up. Having a choice of either the counter or outdoor sitting, we chose the counter seats. The cafe was designed to have a rustic and laid back/casual feeling. Do note that noise level can rise when it gets really packed since it is a small space.

Flan & Latte

Depending on what time you're there, the menu differs for brunch and dinner. Overall, the food that we've ordered was decently good. The truffle fries were great and it came in a mini bucket. I ordered Flan and a latte to start my morning. Upon googling what Flan was, I realised that it was suppose to be an open pastry or sponge cake containing a sweet or savoury filling. What I ate looks nothing like that, so I'm not sure why it was called Flan. Prices are a little steep and I might come by here in the future when it's a little less crowded.

Miam Miam -  A French/Japanese Fusion food place

Food: ★★★☆☆ 
Ambience: ★★★☆☆
Service: ★★★☆☆

I remembered passing by a new cafe/restaurant last week, and ta-dah... This place became our dinner location on one weekend during my birthday staycation.

I was quite sceptical of their Matcha drinks initially as I had really bad ones at Hoshino Coffee at Plaza Singapura. They proved me on wrong and I enjoyed their Matcha latte. :)

We ordered Miam Miam Spaghetti and it was yummy. I felt that their Soufflé items could be improved as I find them a little thick instead of being light and fluffy. Overall, it was a good meal and slightly to the pricey side. Since there was a promotion of 20% off the total bill, the prices were justifiable.

Chocolate Soufflé @ Miam Miam

Counter at Artistry

Food: ★★★☆☆ 
Ambience: ★★★★☆
Service: ★★★★☆

Artistry is a pretty little cafe owned under Chemistry where they would modify their little space to host events and exhibitions. I like how quaint and quiet this place was compared to the noisier & buzzling neighbour, Symmetry. The barista who served us was really friendly and he even told us how Artistry happened. We went with the barista's recommendation on food and it was really yummy. The truffle fries was a little salty but it was very flavourful, so were the mini burgers.

Barista's food recommendation and the coffee had an interesting name.

We stayed for a good hour before we left. That's how comfortable we were in the cafe and my girl friend and I had a good time catching up! I would come back here again and this time, I would make a reservation with them before coming. :)